1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information processing which is applied to a device, such as a character input processing device and a mobile telephone, showing one or more conversion candidates of a character string including an inputted character. In more particular, it relates to a character information conversion processing system which performs predictive conversion of a character string and conversion processing related to time information. In the present invention, a letter, a symbol, an element of a letter or a symbol, or a combination of these is used as a conversion object.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional information processing terminal, such as a portable or mobile telephone, a necessary character for conversion is inputted by using keys to which characters and symbols are assigned, and thereby a desired character string is designed to be given to a user. For example, in the case of inputting a text of e-mail to the mobile telephone, when a conversion key is pressed after input of a character with a key, one or more character strings (Kant-Kant mixture sentences) including the character in a head, which have been inputted before and have been stored, are fetched from a dictionary to display in order. And, a decision key is pressed when the desired character string is displayed. By this, quick input of a desired character string is designed to be performed by means of decreasing the number of times of key input.
As an information processing technology of this kind, patent documents 1 to 12 are in existence.
[Patent Document 1]
The Japanese Patent Laid Open Publication No.2-71361
[Patent Document 2]
The Japanese Patent Laid Open Publication No.63-768
[Patent Document 3]
The Japanese Patent Laid Open Publication No.11-338858
[Patent Document 4]
The Japanese Patent Laid Open Publication No.9-114817
[Patent Document 5]
The Japanese Announcement Patent Publication No.2000-508093
[Patent Document 6]
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,437
[Patent Document 7]
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,011,554
[Patent Document 8]
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,307,549
[Patent Document 9]
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,109,352
[Patent Document 10]
The Japanese Patent Laid Open Publication No.2-154519
[Patent Document 11]
The U.S. Pat. No. 5,187,480
[Patent Document 12]
The Japanese Announcement Patent Publication No.4-502223
The patent document 1 discloses that a sentence is compounded from an inputted word and time information of a timer, and a result of that is displayed on a CRT. The patent document 2 discloses that a next paragraph which is inputted is predicted by interpreting a meaning of a paragraph which is inputted previously, and the next paragraph is presented. The patent document 3 discloses that character strings of Japanese and other language such as English are predicted simultaneously from an inputted character string, and predictive candidates of those are presented. The patent document 4 discloses that one or more words of a character string capable of following after an inputted character string are predicted and are displayed. Thereby, troublesomeness of a selective operation is designed to be reduced. The patent documents 5 to 8 disclose a reduced keyboard using word level disfiguration to resolve ambiguities in keystrokes. The patent documents 6 to 8 are the U.S. Patent Applications corresponding to the invention disclosed in the patent document 5. The patent documents 9 and 10 disclose a system for encoding a collection of ideographies characters. The patent document 10 is the Japanese Patent Application corresponding to the patent document 9. The patent documents 11 and 12 disclose a symbol definition apparatus for forming many kinds of symbols including Chinese characters by using a keyboard. The patent document 12 is the Japanese Patent Application corresponding to the patent document 11.
By the way, in conventional predicative conversion which converts an inputted character into a character string, a history in which information inputted in the past is recorded is referred in the predictive conversion, and an inputted character is preferentially converted into a character string used immediately before the above inputted character, or into a character string having a higher frequency of use. Because of this, sometimes it is difficult for some users to use the input conversion processing.
There is a greeting as a phrase used frequently. For example, a phrase, such as “good morning” and “good night”, is used in accordance with time. When the conversion is performed by referring to only the inputted history, sometimes a gap occurs between a phrase and time of the conversion. Hence, if the gap between the phrase and the time is larger, the number of times of key operations increases and a conversion efficiency of a character may fall.
In a character conversion like this, the patent document 1 compounds a sentence from the inputted word and the time information of the timer and nothing more. The patent documents 2 to 4 predict other character string from the inputted character string and nothing more. The patent documents 5 to 8 discloses the reduced keyboard using word level disfiguration to resolve ambiguities in keystrokes and nothing more. The patent documents 9 to 12 are a technique in connection with forming of symbols including characters and nothing more. Therefore, even if the techniques disclosed in the patent documents 1 to 12 are used, it is impossible to improve the fall of conversion efficiency due to a gap of a phrase caused by a time at the time of conversion.